International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 18-21, 2004 / Town & Country Resort, San Diego, California / Flight Test instrumentation control units have traditionally been low-technology units with
mechanical switches, readouts, and perhaps an RS232 interface. As the complexity of Flight Test
Instrumentation systems and operational requirements increase, and as cockpit space becomes
scarce, these control units are no longer sufficient. These control units need to provide capabilities
commensurate with the complexity of the instrumentation systems they control.
This paper describes an instrumentation control system that uses a Boeing Integrated Defense
Systems (IDS) Flight Test Instrumentation designed Instrumentation Control Unit (ICU). The ICU
communicates with the avionics system to allow pilot control via existing aircraft displays. By
taking advantage of a relatively simple protocol to interface with the avionics system, the substantial
cost of reprogramming the avionics software is avoided, and software control is shifted to the Flight
Test group, thus allowing a tremendous increase in system flexibility at reasonable cost. Functions of
the unit can be changed relatively quickly and inexpensively. This promises a wide range of future
applications, such as in-flight monitoring of flight-critical instrumentation parameters by the pilot,
control of the instrumentation system via uplink (with pilot override), and real-time in-flight
selection of telemetered data streams and parameters.
This paper describes the baseline instrumentation control system and requirements to be used on the
EA-18G Flight Test Program, plus additional future capabilities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/604958 |
| Date | 10 1900 |
| Creators | Wegener, John A., Zettwoch, Robert N. |
| Contributors | The Boeing Company |
| Publisher | International Foundation for Telemetering |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text, Proceedings |
| Rights | Copyright © International Foundation for Telemetering |
| Relation | http://www.telemetry.org/ |
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